Part 3 (1/2)

Billy Porter stared at the newcomer and dropped his soup-spoon with a splash. ”What in thunder!” Rhoda heard him mutter.

Jack Newman spoke hastily.

”This is Mr. Cartwell, our irrigation engineer, Mr. Porter.”

Porter responded to the young Indian's courteous bow with a surly nod, and proceeded with his soup.

”I'd as soon eat with a n.i.g.g.e.r as an Injun,” he said to Rhoda under cover of some laughing remark of Katherine's to Cartwell.

”He seems to be nice,” said Rhoda vaguely. ”Maybe, though, Katherine _is_ a little liberal, making him one of the family.”

”Is there any hunting at all in this open desert country?” asked DeWitt.

”I certainly hate to go back to New York with nothing but sunburn to show for my trip!”

”Coyotes, wildcats, rabbits and partridges,” volunteered Cartwell. ”I know where there is a nest of wildcats up on the first mesa. And I know an Indian who will tan the pelts for you, like velvet. A jack-rabbit pelt well tanned is an exquisite thing too, by the way. I will go on a hunt with you whenever the ditch can be left.”

”And while they are chasing round after jacks, Miss Tuttle,” cut in Billy Porter neatly, ”I will take you anywhere you want to go. I'll show you things these kids never dreamed of! I knew this country in the days of Apache raids and the pony express.”

”That will be fine!” replied Rhoda. ”But I'd rather hear the stories than take any trips. Did you spend your boyhood in New Mexico? Did you see real Indian fights? Did you--?” She paused with an involuntary glance at Cartwell.

Porter, too, looked at the dark young face across the table and something in its inscrutable calm seemed to madden him.

”My boyhood here? Yes, and a happy boyhood it was! I came home from the range one day and found my little fifteen-year-old sister and a little neighbor friend of hers hung up by the back of their necks on butcher hooks. They had been tortured to death by Apaches. I don't like Indians!”

There was an awkward pause at the dinner table. Li Chung removed the soup-plates noiselessly. Cartwell's brown fingers tapped the tablecloth.

But he was not looking at Porter's scowling face. He was watching Rhoda's gray eyes which were fastened on him with a look half of pity, half of aversion. When he spoke it was as if he cared little for the opinions of the others but would set himself right with her alone.

”My father,” he said, ”came home from the hunt, one day, to find his mother and three sisters lying in their own blood. The whites had gotten them. They all had been scalped and were dead except the baby, three years old. She--she--my father killed her.”

A gasp of horror went round the table.

”I think such stories are inexcusable here!” exclaimed Katherine indignantly.

”So do I, Mrs. Jack,” replied Cartwell. ”I won't do it again.”

Porter's face stained a deep mahogany and he bowed stiffly to Katherine.

”I beg your pardon, Mrs. Newman!”

”I feel as if I were visiting a group of anarchists,” said Rhoda plaintively, ”and had innocently pa.s.sed round a bomb on which to make conversation!”

Jack Newman laughed, the tension relaxed, and in a moment the dinner was proceeding merrily, though Porter and Cartwell carefully avoided speaking to each other. Most of the conversation centered around Rhoda.

Katherine always had been devoted to her friend. And though men always had paid homage to Rhoda, since her illness had enhanced her delicacy, and had made her so appealingly helpless, they were drawn to her as surely as bee to flower. Old and young, dignified and happy-go-lucky, all were moved irresistibly to do something for her, to coddle her, to undertake impossible missions, self-imposed.

Porter from his place of vantage beside her kept her plate heaped with delicacies, calmly removed the breast of chicken from his own plate to hers, all but fed her with a spoon when she refused to more than nibble at her meal.

DeWitt's special night-mare was that drafts were blowing on her. He kept excusing himself from the table to open and close windows and doors, to hang over her chair so as to feel for himself if the wind touched her.

Katherine and Jack kept Li Chung trotting to the kitchen for different dainties with which to tempt her. Only Cartwell did nothing. He kept up what seemed to be his usual fire of amiable conversation and watched Rhoda constantly through inscrutable black eyes. But he made no attempt to serve her.

Rhoda was scarcely conscious of the deference showed her, partly because she had received it so long, partly because that detached frame of mind of the hopeless invalid made the life about her seem shadowy and unreal.